The reshaping of Yemen’s balance of power is no longer a mere administrative detail. On September 10, 2025, Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, president of the Southern Transitional Council and a member of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, issued appointments within the structure of the “internationally recognized government.” The move broke with the fragile conventions that the eight-member council had operated since its creation and served as a wake-up call to both the Saudi-led coalition and the other three members of the international quartet—the United States, United Kingdom, and United Arab Emirates—that he could no longer tolerate the internal rifts within the Presidential Leadership Council, formed in April 2022 to manage the transition following the resignation of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
[Al-Zoubaidi] broke with the fragile conventions that the eight-member council had operated since its creation.
The decision did not pass quietly. It prompted the Presidential Leadership Council to convene in Riyadh on September 18 and issue a statement reaffirming its commitment to “partnership and collective leadership” in line with the Declaration of Power Transfer and the founding decree Number 9 of 2022. Implicit in that message was an acknowledgment that Presidential Leadership Council Chairman Rashad al-Alimi had overstepped his mandate by exercising unchecked presidential powers—authorities that the Riyadh Agreement had deliberately entrusted to all eight members.
The September 18 session also referenced a new decision, Number 119 of 2025, to regulate the Presidential Leadership Council’s work and its bodies, with instructions to review both the appointments made by al-Alimi since April 2022 and those recently decreed by al-Zoubaidi. The statement, designed to project unity while deferring real disputes to a technical review, laid bare the core crisis: Who truly has the right to decide in a system crafted to restrain individual rule?
When the Riyadh consultations concluded in 2022, the Quartet and the Presidential Leadership Council deliberately framed their rule as collective leadership rather than a presidential monopoly. The eight-member council is divided evenly between northern and southern representatives, reflecting a transitional partnership rather than a constitutional presidency. Early legal analyses of the transfer document underscored that it constituted a “delegation of authority” rather than a constitutionally rooted presidency—meaning the council, not its chairman, was the legitimate source of executive power.
Seen in this light, al-Zoubaidi’s move cannot be separated from the Riyadh framework itself. His intervention was a forceful reminder of those commitments, meant to restore the balance and resist al-Alimi’s drift toward centralization. It was also a message that any attempt to revert to one-man rule would collide with the legal and political foundations of the transitional order.
Yet the significance of the move is not only legal but also political. The Southern Transitional Council’s project of “restoring the southern state” has shifted from rhetoric to institutional practice—appointments and decisions made inside the framework of the recognized state, rather than from its margins. This signals that the south is no longer negotiating from the outside; it is testing, in practice, the boundaries of partnership and decision-making within the Presidential Leadership Council itself.
The south is no longer negotiating from the outside; it is testing, in practice, the boundaries of partnership and decision-making within the Presidential Leadership Council.
The Presidential Leadership Council’s response—emphasizing cohesion while promising a review—was an attempt to contain escalation through procedural mechanisms, neither openly rejecting al-Zoubaidi’s step nor endorsing it. This is a familiar tactic in fragile coalitions where overlapping centers of power compete for control. But the implications are clear: Al-Zoubaidi is pushing for a more balanced decision-making mechanism within the council, echoing growing calls for a binding “participatory mechanism” inside the Presidential Leadership Council presidency, rather than allowing sensitive state files to be managed by competing fiefdoms.
Behind the political maneuvering, hard realities accumulate. Years of weak governance have produced shadow economies, smuggling networks, and tacit collusion, while the Houthis have used the relative lull to enhance their military capabilities with advanced weaponry and technology flows from Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia.
This has redrawn the rules of maritime and ground engagement in ways that expose the government and the coalition to repeated embarrassment. Against such a centralized adversary, every internal fracture within the “legitimate” camp becomes an advantage for the Houthis and their Iranian backers.
From the southern perspective, al-Zoubaidi’s move is a test of the Southern Transitional Council’s ability to rebalance the transitional partnership while keeping its ultimate objective—the restoration of an independent southern state—within reach. He knows that failing to assert this leadership role would risk shrinking the Southern Transitional Council’s influence on the ground.
The September 18, 2025, statement leaves the door open between two interpretations: reaffirming the partnership or recognizing the southern project. Yet it implicitly concedes the ultimate reference point: the transfer of power document and the subsequent organizational decisions. Still, time weighs on the southern cause. Each day that passes without progress toward restoring statehood is a day when internal rivalries can inflame and external actors can exploit divisions.
The September 18 statement re-established the rules on paper—collective leadership, transitional partnership, and adherence to the 2022 framework.
History shows that fragmenting political movements is the cheapest and most effective way to neutralize them. Unless the Presidential Leadership Council clarifies internal decision-making by reducing its members, formalizing voting mechanisms, or dividing authority between an honorary chair and northern and southern deputies—the council risks perpetual paralysis.
In the end, the September 18 statement re-established the rules on paper—collective leadership, transitional partnership, and adherence to the 2022 framework. But al-Zoubaidi’s intervention exposed how fragile those rules have become in practice. His step forces the question of whether the Presidential Leadership Council can transform the founding text into a binding operational mechanism rather than a symbolic agreement.
If the Council does not, the current system will continue producing crisis after crisis, consigning Yemen to deeper fragmentation—with the Houthis and Iran reaping the rewards.
